About the Book

This book describes the history of the Kilian family in Germany, that immigrated to America in 1732 and ultimately settled in North Carolina.

It begins with Sebastian Kilian, born before 1570 in Kühnhard, then in Baravia under the Holy Roman Emperor, but now in the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg. It documents an unbroken line of descent to Andreas Kilian and his three children born in Germany: Leonhard, Margaretha and Johann. The book is documented with copies of:

- 78 handwritten German church book records

- 3 documents from the Pennsylvania State Archive

- 30 pages of documents from the North Carolina State Archive.

Archival reference numbers are provided in the 212 footnotes. The German documentation includes the handwritten document, a transcription in the original language and a translation into English.

The book discusses what we can learn about the lives of the Kilians in Germany from the documents.

Andreas immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1732. It is not known when his three children arrived, but they were there at least by 1749 and probably before 1743. Andreas had nine other children born in America.

William Randolph McCreight is a physicist and mathematician with experience at NASA in orbital analysis, and at Boeing Aerospace Division predicting the effects on spacecraft from atomic explosions in space. In 1965 he was assigned to England and subsequently lived and worked in England, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and South Africa. He lived in the Far East three years and has professional experience in every western European country, some eastern European countries and Turkey. He became interested in genealogy when examining papers in his great-great-grandmother's trunk. This interest intensified with his first personal computer in 1975 and the advent of genealogy computer programs. He now has over 17,000 names, all confirmed by documentary and historical sources. He is now retired in the Taunus Mountains in Germany and spends his time primarily taking history courses with emphasis on Europe in the Bronze Age to the middle ages, and genealogy research.